If the government is to be believed, we are undergoing a streak of freakily bad luck. First the credit crunch, then astronomical fuel price hikes and now a global food crisis. Could all these by any chance be connected?

Neoliberal policy makers and money-men clearly don't think so, since they are advocating more of the same medicine as a cure - further deregulation of food markets, more restructuring of developing countries sweetened by aid packages, more biotech and, of course, bank bail-outs to sustain the whole debt-addicted economy. In other words, propping up a system that will continue to force famished populations to grow export-only crops, to be fuel-intensively shipped to the developed world, to stock supermarket shelves at inflated prices for debt-encumbered consumers, while the famished producers pay through the nose for imported food at prices inflated by the flight of investment from mortgages into basic commodities. A vicious circle indeed.

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